The Master of Go

Go is an Asian game of strategy. Two players using black and white balls fight for control of the board, while bock the other the player's control. This is book is an early example of creative nonfiction. Kawabatta wrote this book basing it on a Go Match he covered when he was reporter.He included diagrams of the players' positions as the game progresses. The reader does not need to know a lot about Go to follow the gameThe book is about the passing of an era in Japan. It is a battle between the old and young; tradition and the modern world It gives a good view of Japanese society. Be sure to read the footnotes at the back.Go is an Asian game of strategy. Two players using black and white balls fight for control of the board, while bock the other the player's control. This is book is an early example of creative nonfiction. Kawabatta wrote this book basing it on a Go Match he covered when he was reporter.He included diagrams of the players' positions as the game progresses. The reader does not need to know a lot about Go to follow the gameThe book is about the passing of an era in Japan. It is a battle between the old and young; tradition and the modern world It gives a good view of Japanese society. Be sure to read the footnotes at the back.

According to the introduction to the book there is a word in Japanese (shōsetsu - literally: "short story") which means a fictionalized account of an historical happening. The degree to which the account has been turned into fiction is left vague. The Master of Go is a shōsetsu of a famous "retirement" game of Go between the aged Master (Honinbō Shūsai) and the young Challenger (Minoru Kitani). The game was played, and the book is set, in 1938.The account given by Kawabata of the contestants, the contest, and the context is sensitive and beautifully rendered. He provides a wonderful commentary on events as they unfold over the course of the six months of the game.Just as in the game of Go itself, there are patterns within patterns and many levels of complexity in the narrative. For example, although the rules under which the game is conducted have been agreed beforehand there is a continual bargaining and negotiation between the players as the game progresses over how to run the game itself in the light of the Master's failing health and the Challenger's own health problems. This forms an alternative contest within a contest where dignity and honor are at stake with both contestants offering to forfeit the game at different times as a ploy to get their own way.Kawabata provides many poignant touches of descriptive color which punctuate the story of the game. Anyone familiar with haiku poetry will recognize immediately the inspiration behind these short, exquisitely-crafted interludes.If the book was simply an account of a game of Go it would be of limited interest. What makes the book so compelling is to degree to which the culture and mores of Go are intimately intertwined with the culture and mores of Japan at a critical moment of Japan's history and evolution.

I know about Go, though I am ignorant about playing Go. But this book is fascinating even if all details of the competition games described in it are ignored.This book invites being read as a metaphor of a commander in chief during a war in which he disposes of novel weapon systems, or a new type of political leader competing with a traditional ruler, or as a handbook for all who aspire for peak performance. Doing so discovers quite some lessons on greatness dispersed throughout the book, such as the following:.Talent in Go appears at about ten […] if a child does not begin his studies by that age there is no hope for him; grim concentration necessary; a man so disciplined in an art that he had lost the better part of reality; bringing himself to order through silent meditation; reading the Lotus Sutra before starting the match; a passage to enlightenment as the soul threw off all sense of identity […] Was it what had made “the invincible Master”?; once went to a clairvoyant and asked for advice on how to win. The proper method, said the man, was to lose all awareness of self while awaiting an adversary’s play; the true masters revered in the tradition of Go as a way of life and art; In a day the spirit of which was a mixture of idolatry and iconoclasm, the Master went into his last match as the last survivor among idols of old; the finesse and subtlety of the warrior’s way, the mysterious elegance of an art, everything to make it a masterpiece in itself; it was as if his life ended when the crown of invincibility fell from his head; way of Go, moreover, demanded that a player honor his commitments even if his father was dying, even if he seemed on the verge of collapse; a player has the whole of the board constantly in his head, when he is eating and even when he is sleeping; great resolve;.famous for tenacity, and […] given to long deliberation; the required concentration cannot be maintained or the tension endured for three whole months. They mean something akin to a whittling away of the player’s physical being; The Go board is with a player waking and sleeping; being a very little more patient than his adversary; restraining an impulse toward haste; That aggressive Black 69 has been described as “a diabolic stroke”; ferocity; To forfeit the match would be to interrupt the flow of history; carried responsibility for an emerging era; All the plans and studies of the players, all the predictions of us amateurs and of the professionals as well had been sent flying; The fatal play suggested a psychological or a physiological failure; The Master himself could not have measured the tides of destiny within him, or the mischief from those passing wraiths; fires of knowledge and wisdom seemed to blaze up; state of rapture, in the grip of thoughts too powerful to contain; The round, full face had the completeness and harmony of a Buddha head. It was an indescribably marvelous face—perhaps he had entered a realm of artistic exaltation. He seemed to have forgotten his digestive troubles.Set within beautiful descriptions of landscape, flowers, small animals and weather, as is the Japanese way, this book is much better a text for decision makers than all the mass market books written for them. Reading this book is both an aesthetic pleasure and a profound lesson on achieving mastery of the Mind.Professor Yehezkel Dror\The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

i guess this is a journalism story turned into a novel, but not too intriguing. you don't have to understand the game Go in order to enjoy the portrait of the old master of Go, which is really the underlying purpose of the novel. you might think it a great novel, but wait, there are also Kawabata's masterpieces of Beauty and Sadness and Snow Country. the master of go is ok but lacks those beautiful kawabatian phrases of his later novels, you know, the haiku zen descriptions which are so magical. what has always drawn me to kawabata is his feminine style and his thoughtful and beautiful rendering of women. you can feel the warmth (yes indeed) of his women characters from the page. master of Go lacks that. nevertheless if you are interested in Kawabata, please buy the novel and read it, a necessary work.

Ich beschäftige mich seit einiger Zeit mit dem Werk von Kawabata und bin zu einem großen Bewunderer geworden. Ich kaann das Buch sehr empfehlen.

Kawabata's style of writing is very very touching and this book is a great work.

Great book. Amazing story. Interesting display of the game and its players.

really enjoyable thanks :)

You would probably be lost for the actual Go play if you are an amateur player, like me... Strangely, this did not dilute the experience, the excitement, the fine nuances of the duel, the description of the characters, of their physical and mental involvement. A delicate experience, wonderfully written!